Why Twitter is full of one-word tweets from popular accounts

What has inspired Twitter users to become extremely brief?

Amtrak is a gigantic passenger railroad serving most of United States and Canada but in a tweet on Friday it summed up its brand description as "trains".

The one-word tweet gathered more than 1.3 lakh likes and likely sparked a trend where other brands also described themselves in a similar fashion.

trains

— Amtrak (@Amtrak) September 1, 2022

CNN, one of the world's premier news channels, tweeted: "breaking news". Users wondered if an intern was behind the tweet.

breaking news

— CNN (@CNN) September 1, 2022

US-based National Public Radio and NASA also followed suit with their own minimal descriptions.

radio

— NPR (@NPR) September 1, 2022

universe

— NASA (@NASA) September 1, 2022

Sports teams and organisations also jumped on the bandwagon. The American Major League Baseball tweeted "baseball", while Oakland Athletics team wrote "athletics".

Political leaders did not stay behind in catching up to the trend.

US President Joe Biden tweeted "democracy".

democracy

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 2, 2022

John Garamendi, a Democratic Party member, referred to his role as a Congressman in a bare way.

Congress

— John Garamendi (@RepGaramendi) September 1, 2022

Twitter users described the trend as "madness". One account pointed others to a tweet that they believed sparked the flurry of one-word tweets.

"Really annoys me when people say one word and then just say. ‘That’s it. That’s the tweet.’ Please have the confidence to write just the one word," the tweet said.

Really annoys me when people say one word and then just say. ‘That’s it. That’s the tweet.’ Pls, have the confidence to write just the one word.

— BoldLeonidas.eth (@boldleonidas) August 31, 2022

Another user expressed annoyance at how fast the one-word tweets became a trend. 

"This went from cute, quirky tweet to stupid Brand Twitter meme in record time. I hate it here," they said.